


tarnished gems

by macabre



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Post Movie, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-06
Updated: 2012-12-06
Packaged: 2017-11-20 11:13:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/584783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre/pseuds/macabre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven's hatred for Emma should be simple. </p>
<p>It's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tarnished gems

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abbichicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/gifts).



When Raven takes Erik’s hand and Azazel pulls them through space, she assumes a certain position in the group. This lasts only a few days before Emma joins them. Suddenly, Emma is the queen. An ice queen to be sure, and when others tire of her, they inevitable turn to Raven for a laugh, or Angel for a sympathetic ear. Still. Erik chose Raven. She is his right hand partner, and watching Emma slither closer to him as they travel together irritates her. 

Fortunately for Emma, Raven doesn’t recognize herself anymore. She still feels the loss of Darwin, of her home, but most of all her brother. Her emotions peak and plateau, leaving her angry quite often, forcing her to alienate herself in the worst hours.

“You don’t hate Emma,” Angel says sympathetically. “I think you just have your days when you regret your decision to join us, and you take it out on her. Because she’s the most obnoxious.”

They grin, huddled up together in one bed like a sleepover Raven never got to have. Angel either. Raven’s face falls, frowning. “I can’t ever regret wanting to live without fear. I want to be me. We deserve that.”

“Of course we do. I left with Shaw because that’s what I believe.” 

No, Raven thinks; Angel left because she believes she’s entitled to something. Erik does too. They fall asleep some time later, and the comfort of a warm body next to hers fools Raven into thinking she made the right decision to be there.

In daytime hours, the feeling doesn’t last. She watches the others bicker about what to do next – Shaw had a plan. Erik thinks he has a plan. He doesn’t. It’s clear to everyone. So they waste their days gathering intelligence, testing themselves. It seems aimless to Raven, but then again she just misses the days she could step outside by herself for a walk, or go to the movies, go to a café. Now they spend their time in the shadows, and everyone is restless. Azazel, Janos, and especially Emma are used to a certain style of living, consequences be damned, and Erik allows no such indulgences. Every day they prepare as if going to war, but every day the sun sets just the same. 

“Stop pouting,” Emma says over the top of a book. Raven wants to snort; it’s something thick and heavy, whatever it is. “Even I don’t look that miserable.”

“I’m not pouting,” Raven snaps. Emma raises an eyebrow, and even she can hear how childish she sounds. “What are you reading, anyway?”

Tolstoy, of course. Raven doesn’t look away before she rolls her eyes. 

“And what have you been doing with your time that’s so productive?” Emma asks, voice neutral, turning back to her page. 

“I’ve – “ been doing nothing, really. She talks to Angel, flirts occasionally with Azazel, yells at Erik, and generally ignores Janos. 

“That’s what I thought.”

“What do you suggest I do?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Train?”

Raven crosses her arms. They all train together from time-to-time as a team, but no one much trains on their own. Not like they did at the mansion, anyway. “I’m good. I can hold forms much better than I could a month ago.”

“Yes, you can hold a form while at rest, with no real threat. Goody for you.” Emma never sounds impressed, but now she sounds especially unimpressed. “Why don’t you learn to hold your form while under stress?” 

“Oh yeah? Give me a situation. I’ll do it.” What she expects is for them to make a little trip onto the streets of Amsterdam and have Emma, she doesn’t quite know – fling her into oncoming traffic, or get her too pissed to properly function. Neither happens, of course. 

Emma just smiles, patiently slipping a book mark in the spine, then standing and stretching leisurely. She walks past Raven to the door, closing it softly and locking it. Before Emma turns around, Raven manages to thickly swallow, partially in fear. 

Then, with the same leisurely pace, Emma crosses the room, pulls Raven into her thin arms, and kisses her like they’re drowning. Raven is too startled to do much at first, and too scared too. She’s had feelings like these for other women, and she knows Charles saw it skimming the surface of her thoughts once or twice, and the sad looks he gave her of disappointment were enough to shame her away from ever pursuing them. 

Now though. Now though.

It’s Emma kissing her, which is strange, because yes, Emma is attractive, extremely so, and anyone would be a fool not to think her exquisite, but she’s still the last person Raven ever imagined kissing. It’s nice though, because Emma clearly knows what she’s doing, so Raven is content to be let kissed, and she tells herself that is all this is. 

They move to the bed, or better yet to say that Emma pushes Raven to the bed, climbing on top of her and pulling out her loose braid. She shakes out her hair, and Raven, who never mastered the art of seduction, audibly gulps. 

“No one’s going to walk in, right?” Raven asks, because fuck, she might not live through the embarrassment that will follow tomorrow when she has to look at Emma, the other woman knowing then how inexperienced she is. 

“No one’s going to bother us, sugar.” Somehow, the words sound familiar, and even as Emma kisses her neck, her collarbones, her chest – all she can think is that it sounds familiar.

“Wait,” Raven says, “wait. How do I know this is real? That this isn’t in my head and you’re just playing a trick on me?” She recalls now the story Charles delightfully told about the new telepath he’d found in Russia – no hard feelings towards her, just pure wonder. 

Raven doesn’t want to just be someone Emma pretends to fuck. She wants her to remember this, even if it’s a silly afterthought some years from now when she remembers the ragtag band of mutants she used to know, a team that thought they might change the world. Instead, this will be what she remembers. 

“Honey, you’re not an overweight man with too much body hair and a sweating condition.” Emma smiles at her, and Raven would swear she has diamonds in her teeth. “I plan to enjoy this.”

There’s much more kissing, but besides that, Raven feels like she does little work. Even kissing she can take a pleasurable back seat to, because Emma doesn’t mind driving. When Raven tries to reach for her – touch her breast, or even just her shoulder – Emma patiently moves her hand away. 

“Let me. You just concentrate on your form. Pick one, and keep it.”

When Raven takes her blonde haired, blue-eyed form, she tells herself it’ll be easy this way. It’s the skin she grew up with, even if it isn’t her natural skin, but if it feels like clinging to something she’ll never be able to have, the opposite of the very reason she’s here, then she ignores it. 

Push down and suppress. She’s learned so well from Charles. 

Emma takes her time; it surprises her for some reason. They’ve never been particularly friendly, and well, Raven would have thought it was a requirement when spending so much time in between someone’s legs. Whatever she is doing burns – and burns. From the tip of her toes up to her stomach and her fingers and she feels it on the tip of her tongue. It’s a slow burn, and Raven knows she’s going to perish and all she wants to do is take Emma with her, but she won’t allow it. 

The other woman hums into her overheated skin and it’s only then that Raven realizes that her pale skin is starting to look a little unnaturally pale – a blue tint that rests right under her skin, as if she had a little paint on her that didn’t wash off all the way. Cursing, she clamps down on that feeling, the itch that comes before shifting, and focuses on the creamy skin she always wanted, the blue eyes that identified her as Charles’ sister. 

But she feels it, no matter how fast or slow Emma moves against her with her tongue and lips and fingers. The long blonde curls turn red at the ends, and there are bumps under her skin. 

When the fire rises above everything else, Raven screams and curls her toes and tries to think – remember – hold onto that feeling, both the fire and the need to quench it. She feels the tremor, the riptide pulling at her skin, and a wave of blue passes, coming and going and at the end, she is just blonde haired and blue-eyed, but she knows that she failed the test. She shifted for a moment and couldn’t help it. 

Emma slides her way up to Raven’s lips and kisses her once more, a lazy smile pressed into her frown. Tilting her head, she looks up and down her form. Raven, even though she picked this form, grew into it and molded it, feels like a monstrosity next to Emma. 

“You weren’t meant to look this way,” she says, folding her hands on top of Raven’s chest and settling her chin on top of them. 

“Do you prefer me like this?” Raven shifts into her blue form. She’s more comfortable in it now than she was a few months ago, but she feels especially vulnerable under Emma’s (mostly) nude body. 

Between the grin in her mouth and the grin in her eyes, for the first time Raven notices how feline Emma looks. Ready to pounce at any given moment. “No competition.”

It’s then that she thinks that Emma is decidedly used to societal beauty, and maybe what she’s looking for falls outside that range. Maybe she’s most comfortable with things that defy normal. 

Mutant and proud.

“Not much challenge keeping this form though.” Emma slides her hands over the grooves in her skin, sighing. Flipping her hair out of her eyes, she grins at Raven. “Next time we’ll pick something less familiar to you.”

“Next time?”

Emma rolls off her, standing and adjusting herself accordingly. Glancing over her shoulder, she once more rakes her eyes up and down Raven’s form. 

“Next time. Maybe I’ll shift next time too. Let you find out how easy it is to please me then if you’re so anxious.”

In time, Raven learns the feel and taste of diamonds under her skin, under her tongue.


End file.
